Breaking 200

The greatest milesone in motoring; once the preserve of daredevil record- breakers. Now doable for £5k on a second-hand Suzuki.

Man breaks 200mph (205 mph): Man first passed the 200mph barrier way back in 1921. However, Joseph Sadi-Lecointe was in an aeroplane at the time, which is clearly cheating.

Land speed record  (203 mph): With two 22.4-litre aircraft engines generating 1,000bhp, no one was massively surprised when Sir Henry Segrave’s  Sunbeam 1,000hp nudged passed 200mph.

Auto Union Type C (203 mph): Grand Prix racing cars first saw 200mph courtesy of the legendary pre-war Auto Unions, and their mid-mounted 550bhp supercharged V16s.

Water speed record (202 mph): Donald Campbell first nailed the dowuble ton in Bluebird K7 on Lake Ullswater in 1955. He went on getting faster for over a decade. Then stopped abruptly.

Swamp Rat 6 Dragster Don Garlits: The godfather of drag racing, Don ‘Big Daddy’ Garlits, was the   
 first man to reach 200mph over the standard quarter mile.

Thermo King Streamliner (236 mph): The superbly named Virgil W. Snyder took the first diesel engine to 200mph. And this record stood until the JCB Dieselmax appeared in 2008.

Ferrari F40 (201 mph): Commissioned by Enzo Ferrari in his twilight years, the F40 was meant to stick Ferrari’s flag right back in the sports-car map.  It was the first production car to pass 200mph and the
 fastest street-legal car in the world. But only until 1989.

McLaren F1 (240mph): Gordon Murray’s supercar-to-end-all-supercars was the first naturally aspirated car to hit 200mph. And is still the fastest non-blown car of all time.

(Ahem): Strictly speaking, the Suzuki Hayabusa is not the first bike to touch 200mph because Suzuki.
 made sure it couldn’t. Unless you fiddled with the exhaust for five minutes, But you wouldn’t do that, would you...?

Police go 200mph: Just when you thought we’d left them for dust, Italy’s infamous Polizia get a Gallardo (and just as quickly crash it)